VI.

“TELL me more about the Miss Carpenters,” said Miss Flodden shyly,
keeping her eyes fixed on the rapidly flowing twist of water between the big
shingle, where every now and then came the spurt of a salmon's leap.

They were seated, after tea, and another hard day's cataloguing, under some
beech trees that overhung the Tweed. From the fields opposite—no longer
England, already Scotland—came the pant and whirr of a threshing-machine;
while from the woods issued the caw of innumerable rooks, blackening the
sky. A heron rose from among the reeds of the bank, and mounted, printing
the pale sky with his Japanese outline. There was incredible peacefulness,
not unmixed with austerity, in the gurgle of the water, the green of the
banks, the scent of damp earth.

Greenleaf, who was very reserved about his friends, so much that one friend
might almost have imagined him to possess no others, had somehow slid
into
page: 179 speaking of his little Bloomsbury
world to this girl, who was so foreign to it. It had come home to him how
utterly Miss Flodden had lived out of contact with all the various concerns
of life, and out of sight of the people who have such. Except pottery and
violin music, come into her existence by the merest accident, and remaining
there utterly isolated, she had no experience, save of the vanities of the
world. But what struck him most, and seemed to him even more piteous, was
her habit of regarding these vanities as matters not of amusement, but of
important business. To her, personally, it would seem, indeed, that frocks,
horses, diamonds, invitations to this house or that, and all the
complications of social standing, afforded little or no satisfaction. But
then she accepted the fact of being an eccentric, a creature not quite all
it should be; and she expected everyone else to be different, to be
seriously engaged in the pursuit of the things she, personally, and owing to
her eccentricity, did not want.

It was extraordinary how, while she expressed her own distaste for various
weaknesses and shortcomings, she defended those who gave way to them as
perfectly normal creatures. Greenleaf was horrified to hear her explain,
with marvelous perception of how
page: 180 and
wherefore, and without any blame, the manner in which women may gradually
allow men not their husbands to pay their dressmaker's bills, and gradually
to become masters of their purse and of themselves: the necessity of a new
frock at some race or ball, the desire to outshine another woman, to get
into royalty's notice, and the fear of incensing a husband already hard
up—all this seemed to Miss Flodden perfectly natural and incontrovertible;
and she pleaded for those who gave way under such pressure.

“Of course I wouldn't do it,” she said, twisting a long straw in her hands;
“it strikes me as bad form, don't you know; but then I'm peculiar, and there
are so many things in the world which other folk don't mind, and which I
can't bear. I don't like some of their talk, and I don't like their not
running quite straight. But then I seem to have been born with a skin less
than one ought to have.”

Greenleaf listened in silent horror. In the course of discussing how much the
world might be improved by some of his socialistic plans, this young lady of
four or five and twenty had very simply and quietly unveiled a state of
corruption, of which, in his tirades against wealth and luxury, he had had
but the vaguest idea. “You see,” Miss Flodden had remarked,
page: 181 “it's because one has to have so many things
which one's neighbours have, whether they give one much pleasure or not,
that a woman gets into such false positions, which make people, if things
get too obvious, treat her in a beastly, unjust way. But women have always
been told that they must have this and that, and go to such and
such a house, otherwise they'd not keep up in it all; and then they're
fallen upon afterwards. It's awfully unfair. Why, of course, if one hadn't
always been told that one must have frocks, and carriages, and
must go to Marlborough House, one wouldn't get married. Of
course it's different with me, because I'm queer, and I like making pots,
and am willing to know no one. But then that's all wrong, at least my
married sister is always saying so. And, of course, I'm not going to marry,
however much they bore me about it.”

“You speak as if women got married merely for the sake of living like their
neighbours,” remarked Greenleaf; “that's absurd.”

Miss Flodden, seated on a stone, looked up at him under his beech tree. Her
face bore a curious expression of incredulity dashed with contempt. Could he
be a Pharisee?

page: 182

“There may be exceptions,” she answered, “and perhaps you may know some. But
if a woman were secure of her living, and did not want things, why should
she get married?” It was as if she had said, Why should a Hindoo widow burn
herself? “There must be some inducement,” she added, looking into the water
and plucking at the grass, “to give oneself into the keeping of another
person.” Her face had that same contraction, as once when she had mentioned
the matter before.

“Good God,” thought Greenleaf, “into what ugly bits of life had this girl
been forced to look!” And he felt a great pity and indignation about things
in general.

Miss Flodden sent a stone skimming across the river, as if to dismiss the
subject, and then it was that she said rather hesitatingly:

“Tell me more about the Miss Carpenters.”

She had an odd, timid curiosity about Greenleaf's friends, about everyone who
did anything, as if she feared to intrude on them even in thought.

Greenleaf had spoken about them before and not unintentionally. These three
sisters, living in their flat off Holborn, doing all their housework
themselves, and yet finding time to work among the poor, to be
page: 183 cultivated and charming, were a stalking horse of
his, an example he liked to bring before this member of fast society.

He had taken his refusal by one of the sisters with a philosophy which had
astonished himself, for he certainly had thought that Delia was very dear to
him. She was dear in a way now. But he felt quite pleased at her marriage
with young Farquhar of the Museum, and he rather enjoyed talking about her.
He told Miss Flodden of Maggie Carpenter's work among the sweaters, and of
the readings of English literature she and Clara gave to the shop-girls; and
he was a little shocked, when he told her of the young woman from
Shoolbred's who had borrowed a volume of Webster, that Val Flodden had never
heard of that eminent dramatist, and thought he was the dictionary. He
described the little suppers they gave in their big kitchen, where the one
or two guests helped to lay the table and to wash up afterwards, previous to
going to the highest seats in the Albert Hall, or to some socialist lecture;
then the return on foot through the silent, black Bloomsbury streets. He
made it sound even more idyllic than it really was. Then he spoke of Delia
and the piano lessons she gave and the poems she wrote. He even repeated
page: 184 two of the poems out loud and felt that
they were very beautiful.

“They can never bore themselves,” remarked Miss Flodden, pensively.

“Bore themselves?” responded Greenleaf.

“Yes: bore themselves and feel they just must have something
different to think about, like birds beating against cage bars.” Then, after
a pause, she said vaguely and hesitatingly: “I wish there were a chance for
one to know the Miss Carpenters.”

Greenleaf brightened up. This was what he wished. “Of course you shall know
them, if you care, Miss Flodden, only—”

“Only—you mean that they would think me a bore and an intruder.”

“No,” answered Greenleaf, he scarcely knew why, “that's not what I meant. But
you must remember that you and they belong to different classes of
society.”

Miss Flodden's face contracted. “Ah,” she exclaimed angrily. “Why must you
throw that in my face? You have said that sort of thing several times
before. Why do you?”

Why, indeed? For Greenleaf could not desist, every now and then, from
bringing up that fact. It
page: 185 made the girl
quiver, but he could not help himself; it was an attempt to find out whether
she was really in earnest, which he occasionally doubted; and also it was a
natural reaction against certain cynical assumptions, certain takings for
granted on Miss Flodden's part that the vanity and corruption of her
miserable little clique permeated the whole of the world—of the world which
did not even know, in many instances, that there was such a thing as a smart
lot!

But now he was sorry.

“Indeed,” he said sorrowfully, “such a gulf between classes unfortunately
still exists. In our civilisation, where luxury and the money which buys it
go for so much, those who work must necessarily be separate from those who
play.”

“Heaven knows you have no right to abuse us for having money,” exclaimed Miss
Flodden, much hurt. “Why, if I don't get married, and I shan't, I shall
never have a penny to bless myself with.”

“It's a question of the lot one belongs to,” answered Greenleaf unkindly; but
added, rather remorsefully: “Would you like me to give you a letter for the
Miss Carpenters when next you go to town? I have,” he hesitated a little,
“talked a good deal about you with them.”

page: 186

“Really!” exclaimed Miss Flodden quickly. “That's awfully good of you—I mean
to give me a letter—only I fear it will bore them. I shall be going to town
for a week or two in October. May I call on them then, do you think?”

“Of course.” And Greenleaf, who was a business-like man, drew out his
pocket-book, full of little patterns for pots and notes for lectures, and
wrote on a clean page:

“Mem.: Letter for the Miss Carpenters for Miss Flodden.”

“I will write it to-night or to-morrow; you shall have it before I leave. By
the way, that train the day after to-morrow is at 6.20, is it not?”

“Yes,” answered Miss Flodden. “I wish you could stay longer.”

And they walked home.

As they wandered through the high-lying fields of green oats and yellow
barley, among whose long beards the low sun made golden dust, with the dark,
greenish Cheviots on one side, purple clouds hanging on their moor sides,
and the three cones of the Eildons rising, hills of fairy-land, faint upon
the golden sunset mist—as they wandered talking of various things, pottery,
philosophy, and socialism, Greenleaf felt stealing
page: 187 across his soul a peacefulness as unlike his
usual mood, as this northern afternoon, with soughing grain and twittering
of larks, was different from the grime and bustle of London. He knew, now,
that Miss Delia Carpenter's refusal had been best for him; his nature was
too thin to allow of his giving himself both to a wife and family, and to
the duties and studies which claimed him; he would have starved the
affections of the first while neglecting the second. His life must always be
a solitary one with his work. But into this rather cheerless solitude, there
seemed to be coming something, he could scarcely tell what. Greenleaf
believed in the possible friendship between a man and a woman; if it had not
existed often hitherto, that was the fault of our corrupt bringing up. But
it was possible and necessary; a thing different from, more perfect and more
useful, than any friendship between persons of the same sex. But more
different still, breezier, more robust and serene, than love even at its
best. And had he not always wished for that sister, that Emily who had never
existed? Of course he did not contemplate seeing very much of Miss Flodden;
still less did he admit to himself that this strange, reserved, yet
outspoken girl might be the friend he craved for. But he felt a curious
page: 188 satisfaction, despite his better reason,
which protested against everything abnormal, and which explained a great
deal by premature experience of the world's ugliness—he felt a satisfaction
at Miss Flodden's aversion to marriage. He could not have explained why, but
he knew in a positive manner that this girl never had been, and never would
be, in love; that this young woman of a frivolous and fast lot, was a sort
of female Hippolytus, but without a male Diana; and he held tight to the
knowledge as to a treasure.